It’s been two months.

I still remember the sort-of prologue of our relationship. The time when you used to be just my best friend, just the one I talked to about everything under the sun, from what we ate for breakfast to our hopes and dreams for the future. It had been an ordinary day when the realization hit like Cupid’s arrow to the heart, a mental and emotional pang, and I knew. I just knew.

I’m reading that last bit over and over again, asking myself: what had I known? That I had fallen in love? That you were the one? I had only been fourteen, how could I have known anything of the sort? No, love in itself was a distant, untouchable thing for me at the time, something I didn’t quite understand and didn’t try to.

It was the idea of being in an intimate relationship that I wanted to chase.

And somehow, I was aware of that. I knew that I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into. I knew that once I told you that I felt something for you, it would be treading Unchartered Waters without knowing what creatures lay beneath.

Yet I knew that if I had to swim unchartered waters, I’d do it for you.

And so I did. And soon enough, I got what I wanted – a relationship. It wasn’t easy – the bad sometimes made me cry at night, but the good, oh, the good was good. You made me feel so alive, with our late night talks and our kisses, our dates and our secrets. Our banters made me feel like there was a blazing fire running through my veins, and at the end of the day, there was no one I’d rather fight with than you.

For a while, you were my sun. Until the bad got worse.

Believe me when I say it wasn’t you – at least, not at first. It had wholly been me. It was my own mix of pride and self-pity that made me so numb and unfeeling at first, then sensitive and anxious later. I felt like I wasn’t good enough for you sometimes, but felt entitled to be loved by you all the same. It was my ever-indecisive heart that constantly hurts your feelings. I took out my frustrations about myself on you, because you, who claimed to love me with all your heart, were the one who – I thought, I thought, I thought – understood me the most.

This was all because I had no idea who I was. I tried to love someone else in hopes of them sorting this all out for me, without realizing that this was my fight, my problem.

You stood by me. God, I guess that was what I used to love the most about you. You just wouldn’t give up, no matter how many times I pushed you away and hurt you.

But I guess people have their limits.

I don’t blame you for choosing her over me. (I don’t want to lie, I used to, but now I understand.) It was my fault for pushing you too much. I realize now that if I had understood what love was before trying to pursue you, things would’ve turned out much different. If I had known and understood myself as a person, I wouldn’t have made this mess so difficult to get out of.

I understand now that your choosing her was a sign that you’ve had enough.

I remember the way your shirt smelled – like a laundromat, I used to say – when I hugged you after a long day at school. I remember, God, I could still feel the way your lips felt against mine when you steal a kiss from me at night in passageways where no one would see and know. I am now staring at all the gifts you’ve given me – toys, CDs, letters – and I just can’t stop thinking about what it felt back then, the time when you were still my sun, when you told me you’d marry me one day, when I told you no, we weren’t making kids, we were adopting them, because God, have you seen how many poor children are stuck in orphanages?, when we were so sure there was no end to this little forever of ours, because you were in love with me, and I was in love with you, and that was all that mattered.

I think about you all the time, but I’m also aware that it’s too late. At first, the aftermath left me wondering about second chances, but I got over that. Because now know what I have to do, and that is to find myself, and to think twice before treading uncharted waters.

It’s been two months. I think it’s time to give up on you as well.